Stephen Crane (November 1, 1871 - June 5, 1900) was an American writer and poet. He was born in Newark, New Jersey, and began his career as a journalist, working, according to his own account, as a "slum reporter" in New York City. The experience provided him with important material for his first novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. Crane released the book under the pseudonym "Johnston Smith" and paid for the publishing himself. It was not a commercial success, though it was praised by several critics of the time. It was in this novel that readers were first introduced to Crane's writing style. He used a method that has come to be known as "naturalism," in which characters face very realistic and often bleak circumstances. This style of writing would be a defining trait of his later work, especially The Red Badge of Courage.
This was followed by The Red Badge of Courage (1895), a powerful tale of the American Civil War. The book won international acclaim for its realism and psychological depth in telling the story of a young soldier facing the horrors and triumphs of war for the first time. Crane never experienced battle personally, but conducted interviews with a number of veterans, some of whom may have suffered from what is now called post-traumatic stress disorder. Because his depiction of the psychological as well as military aspect of war was so accurate, he was hired by a number of newspapers as a correspondent during The Greco-Turkish War e.g. "Death and the Child" (1898) and The Spanish-American War.
In 1896 the boat in which he accompanied a Cuban-exile expedition to Cuba was wrecked, leaving Crane adrift for fourteen days. A result of the incident was Crane's development of tuberculosis, which would eventually become fatal. He recounted these experiences in The Open Boat and Other Tales 1898. The background for this story the wreck of Cuban-exile Commodore expedition is found in his newspaper account see . The real life wrecked ship, the Commodore, was attempting to land arms and men to supply the Cuban Mambi forces Cuban War of Independence (1895-1898) which would conclude with the Spanish-American War (1898).
The “The Open Boat” is the best known number of Crane's stories dealing with Cuba and its wars, ; however, a good number of Crane's other accounts are set in Cuba or about Cuba. These include: “Flanagan and His Short Filibustering Adventure” (1897), “The Price of the Harness” (1898), “The Clan of No-Name” (1899), “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”(1899), “The Lone Charge of William B. Perkins” (1899), ”The Revenge of the Adolphus” (1899), “The Sergeant's Private Mad House” (1899) “Virtue in War” (1899), ”The Second Generation” (1899) and the “Majestic Lie” (1900).
In 1897, Crane settled in England, where he befriended writers Joseph Conrad and Henry James. Shortly before his death, he released Whilomville Stories 1900, the most commercially successful of the twelve books he wrote.
Crane married Cora Taylor, the proprietor of the Hotel de Dream. They traveled all around the world together and eventually moved to London, England to live as man and wife.
Crane died of tuberculosis (consumption) at age 28, in Badenweiler, Germany. He is buried in Evergreen Cemetery in what is now Hillside, New Jersey.
